The Railway Children - E. Nesbit

faced clock on the wall of the signal-box.
The man looked at the clock, sprang to the levers, and wrenched them this
way and that. An electric bell tingled—the wires and cranks creaked, and the
man threw himself into a chair. He was very pale, and the sweat stood on his
forehead “like large dewdrops on a white cabbage,” as Phyllis remarked later.
He was trembling, too; the children could see his big hairy hands shake from
side to side, “with quite extra-sized trembles,” to use the subsequent words of
Peter. He drew long breaths. Then suddenly he cried, “Thank God, thank God
you come in when you did—oh, thank God!” and his shoulders began to heave
and his face grew red again, and he hid it in those large hairy hands of his.
“Oh, don't cry—don't,” said Phyllis, “it's all right now,” and she patted him on
one big, broad shoulder, while Peter conscientiously thumped the other.
But the signalman seemed quite broken down, and the children had to pat him
and thump him for quite a long time before he found his handkerchief—a red
one with mauve and white horseshoes on it—and mopped his face and spoke.
During this patting and thumping interval a train thundered by.
“I'm downright shamed, that I am,” were the words of the big signalman when
he had stopped crying; “snivelling like a kid.” Then suddenly he seemed to get
cross. “And what was you doing up here, anyway?” he said; “you know it ain't
allowed.”
“Yes,” said Phyllis, “we knew it was wrong—but I wasn't afraid of doing
wrong, and so it turned out right. You aren't sorry we came.”
“Lor' love you—if you hadn't 'a' come—” he stopped and then went on. “It's a
disgrace, so it is, sleeping on duty. If it was to come to be known—even as it is,
when no harm's come of it.”
“It won't come to be known,” said Peter; “we aren't sneaks. All the same, you
oughtn't to sleep on duty—it's dangerous.”
“Tell me something I don't know,” said the man, “but I can't help it. I know'd
well enough just how it 'ud be. But I couldn't get off. They couldn't get no one to
take on my duty. I tell you I ain't had ten minutes' sleep this last five days. My
little chap's ill—pewmonia, the Doctor says—and there's no one but me and 'is
little sister to do for him. That's where it is. The gell must 'ave her sleep.
Dangerous? Yes, I believe you. Now go and split on me if you like.”
“Of course we won't,” said Peter, indignantly, but Phyllis ignored the whole of
the signalman's speech, except the first six words.
“You asked us,” she said, “to tell you something you don't know. Well, I will.